So that is an interview where Riff Raff talks about his work ethic and about how he coming up in the world of rap.

But he also talks about audience reception of his songs. I’ve transcribed Riff Raff on haters before, so here is Riff Raff on audience reception/perception and interpretation of his music:

If people don’t have a visual concept–if I don’t show them–cause p–, I hate to say it, but 90% of the world is like [confused face] you, you have, its physical, like you have to be in front of them and show them. Like if someone tell you something, explain something, or write it like [they] be like “Oooh I don’t know, my attention span or my brain doesn’t function.”

[Singing] I done pour codeine on my white silk pants [stops]. If I say that, someone “Pssht, what the fuck’s he talking about man!” so I had to literally get codeine, spend all that money on that, and pour it on my white silk pants.

[Surprised, affected voice] “What does that mean!?”[stops]

It means that I’m pouring codeine on my–

[Surprised, affected voice] “What the fuck does that mean? I mean, so you just have that much money and time on your hands that you can make a song about pouring codeine on your white silk pants?![stops]

Yes, that’s–that’s what I mean.

[Surprised, affected voice] And you’re playing spin the bottle with two beautiful white tan bad bitches?![stops]

That’s what the video concept is about.

Riff is doing something pretty amazing here–he is obviously frustrated with overreading of his work and, at the same time, a total lack of even making an effort to “get on his level.” Which is to say that Riff Raff, in all ways, wants you to get on board with the flatness of both him and his songs–“White Silk Pants” isn’t a song about nothing but it also isn’t a song about anything more than what we are presented with.

When I wrote about Riff Raff and pure aesthetics, this is part of what I had in mind–Riff Raff himself is nothing more than a physical body with descriptors literally mapped onto him, but he also isn’t a nonexistent trash media entity. He isn’t a promo Twitter account that has never broken fifty followers, but he isn’t a media conglomerate with infinite depth paired with infinite complicity in violence.

We can’t read Riff Raff too deeply, or deeply at all, but it is also impossible to forget about him.